PG-13 for some rude humor, action violence and language. 111
minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

“Get Smart,” which began its life on TV as a
classic sitcom that cleverly satirized Cold War espionage, has been
transformed for the big screen into just another standard action
picture.

Pity, too. Because Agent Maxwell Smart himself would have made a
more entertaining movie, just by picking up a camera and bumbling
his way through it.

You certainly can’t complain about the casting of Steve Carell
in the lead role: What other actor has the buttoned-down looks and
self-deprecating sense of humor to fill Don Adams’ shoe phone?

Carell’s Smart is a good guy — hardworking, earnest, desperate
to prove he’s ready to be promoted from behind the desk as an
analyst to the challenges of working as a field agent. While it’s
true that doing a dead-on impression of Adams would have seemed
campy and fallen flat, this characterization misses the point, too.
The combination of self-seriousness and ineptitude is what made
Maxwell Smart a comic icon. No one involved with this movie seems
to get that.

In this screen version, Smart and the glamorous, capable Agent
99 (Anne Hathaway, kicking far more butt than Barbara Feldon ever
could have imagined) find themselves in a series of increasingly
elaborate, explosive scenarios. It all plays out in big, loud,
obvious fashion.

As for the plot, it feels like an afterthought, something
cobbled together once all the pratfalls and sight gags were lined
up. An attack on CONTROL exposes all the secret agents’ identities,
leaving Max and 99 as the only ones left to go after the rival spy
agency KAOS and undermine their nuclear plot.

Or something.

In case all that failed to wow the crowds, and it probably will,
“Get Smart” wedges in a totally needless romance between Max and
Agent 99. The 20-year age difference between Carell and Hathaway is
a bit of a distraction, but fundamentally, they just don’t have
enough chemistry to suggest that falling for each other would be
inevitable.

Besides, Agents 86 and 99? It just doesn’t add up.

THE LOVE GURU

PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language,
some comic violence and drug references. 88 minutes. One and a half
stars out of four.

In “The Love Guru,” Mike Myers must come to love himself before
he can love others. From the credits of this scattershot comedy
sketch stretched and strained to movie length, Myers clearly loved
himself to the point of narcissism going in.

Besides starring, Myers is a producer and co-writer.

Self-love does not seem to be an issue for Myers, unlike Pitka,
the world’s second-best guru, who carries a chip on his shoulder
from growing up in the shadow of top-seeded rival Deepak
Chopra.

Most of the gags are half-hearted, many puzzling and unfunny
lines delivered by Myers with his trademark sly stare into the
camera, as though waiting for fans to guffaw. He may have a long
wait.

Myers pushes the PG-13 rating with the movie’s bawdy language,
coarse images and scatological humor involving such things as
elephant dung and a fight with urine-soaked mops.

Obviously having fun playing Pitka, Myers’ earnestness makes
some lines seem funnier than they are. But his zeal cannot save
most of the empty jokes from landing with a deadly thud.

Self-referential — or self-reverential — moments also include a
snippet where a car radio briefly tunes in Queen’s “Bohemian
Rhapsody,” Myers undergoing a fleeting flashback to “Wayne’s
World,” when he and Dana Carvey led a group sing-along to the
song.

Myers wants us all to love him, wants us all to be in on his
jokes. But love and laughs are earned, not given just because you
mug for the camera behind a wild wig and beard.